My kids love Jelly Belly jellybeans, and when they were younger, we would buy a bag and take turns taking a jellybean from the bag to taste and see if it was good. As I think back to those jellybeans, they each had an impact on what I understood jellybeans to be. There were more than the five flavors I got each year in my Easter basket as a boy, and they were good. It’s the same way in your life when you look at God. There are things in life that show you that He is more than just the five flavors you are used to. One of those events that showed me this came when I was a young teen, and it shaped not only what I thought God was capable of doing, but showed me that He still answered prayer in some of the most miraculous ways.
Asking For a Miracle
One Sunday morning in the small church I grew up in something happened that I had never witnessed before. A young couple came to the front of the sanctuary during the service and asked for the elders of the church to come and pray for their baby girl. She was seriously ill, and the doctors did not expect her to live long. The couple was asking for prayer for a miracle to save their little girl.
The church I grew up in was a wonderful church. We loved God and people and were taught to love the Bible as well. We believed in prayer and that God answered prayer, but this was the first time I had seen someone come forward asking for a miracle. They were not asking God to be with someone who was sick – they were asking God to directly intervene and move supernaturally in this little girl’s body. I watched intently as they prayed for the couple and their little girl, as I knew the family and the situation. This was close to home for me.
We left church that day and went on to our usual activities, and soon the events of that church service slipped to the back of my mind. Some time passed and then one day I heard some amazing news. That baby girl had received a miraculous healing! I was so excited for her and her family. I was also excited because this was the first miracle that I had been around. I loved to read my Bible and the many stories of God moving in miraculous ways, and now I saw that same power at work of people I knew and cared for. It wasn’t just a story in a chapter, it was a real event blessing the lives of people who were real to me.
God’s love for His children and His willingness to answer a prayer for something specific and supernatural took me into the pages of my Bible. As I read through Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John they had a different depth to them. I would read one of the accounts of Jesus healing a sick person and then think back to that little girl. When I read about the centurion coming to Jesus to asking Him to heal his servant, I thought of the young couple walking up to the front of the sanctuary that Sunday. While I didn’t know the passage at the time, they had come forward in accordance with James 5:14 – 15:
14 Is anyone among you sick? Let him call for the elders of the church, and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord. 15 And the prayer of faith will save the sick, and the Lord will raise him up.
They brought their baby girl to the front of the church for prayer to see her saved from sickness and raised up. To my amazement that is what happened! It challenged me to read my Bible differently and see God as still active in our lives. I don’t know if that couple came for prayer as their first move or as their last, but in either case God honored their hearts and they saw that baby live, graduate high school, and go to college. It taught me to be open to what God can do in a situation if we follow His Word and trust Him. I am so thankful I was there that day and to know the family.
That little girl’s grandfather had a profound effect on my teen years and my pursuit of God. He was always willing to take the time to talk with me about what I had been studying, and I felt at ease talking with him about passages in the Bible that we didn’t talk about in our church. He would smile and encourage me to continue to study and seek after God. I didn’t understand many things, but I had learned not to limit what God could do in my life. If it lined up with His Word it was possible.
God Is Good and Does Good
Over the years I’ve seen prayers answered as I had asked, and others not. I’ve done my best to not let the disappointments in life become the expectation for my prayers, and I’d encourage you do not let them either. David went through all sorts of disappointments on his life, but during hard times he still could say:
I would have lost heart, unless I had believed that I would see the goodness of the Lord
In the land of the living. (Psalm 27:13)
David knew that God was good, and that His goodness had not disappeared over time David expected God to bring His goodness into his life. He read his situation considering who God was, and not who God was considering his situation. You have that same choice. You can look at the world around you and decide that it is going, as my mom used to say, to hell in a handbasket – OR you can look at those same things and decide that God’s goodness is available to you here in the land of the living.
God is still doing miraculous things today. I first saw that in that baby girl, and I’ve saw it many times since then. That little girl’s miracle set me on a course to trusting God for my own. Nine years ago, God healed me from latter stage cancer. I looked to Him for His goodness, and I received it. You can read more about my testimony here and here.
Let your perception of who God is and what He wants to do in your life be shaped by His Spirit and by His Word. God is still doing amazing things today in the lives of people who will take Him at His word.
He’s healing baby girls.
He’s mending broken relationships.
He’s delivering people from addictions.
And so much more. Why? Because He is good, and He loves you.
The goodness of God is an expression of Who He Is, and He wants you to experience it in your life. David wrote in Psalm 34:8-
Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good; Blessed is the man who trusts in Him!
Just like a piece of candy, don’t make your decision by the wrapper – open it up and taste. Make the effort to know God and you won’t be disappointed.
Thanks for listening and have a great day!
